︎︎︎
នឹកដូចក្តីស្រមៃលើសអ្វីដែលនៅនឹកឃើញ
I Miss You More Than I Remember You is an invocation of memory and longing, unfolding as a sensuous installation that “doubles” as a funerary procession. International remembrance observing fifty years since the Cambodian genocide on April 17, 1975, reignited discourse over narratives of historical trauma, diasporic memory, and U.S. militarism in mainland Southeast Asia.
Reflecting on personal and familial experiences of displacement and resettlement, I reframe the temporal and atmospheric poetics of Theravāda Buddhism to analogize the spatial sociality of Cambodian American refugees as stuck between “insider” and “outsider.” I posit this spatial intervention as counter-memorial, resisting the historicity of archives and gesturing towards the material ephemerality of Theravāda Buddhism, particularly by appropriating Khmer funerary cloth.
The exhibition title – I Miss You More Than I Remember You — is itself a procession of words, sensations, and intimacies, taken from a quote by Vietnamese American writer Ocean Vuong — further articulating the abstraction, dilution, spectrality, and attempt at replicating that which is felt. By de-historicizing mourning and grief through the affective surfaces of Buddhism, this processional installation of objects and media distills postwar intimacies to forestall futurity and renegotiate diasporic belonging.
04.14.2025–04.19.2025
MFA Thesis Exhibition in Tjaden Gallery at Cornell University Art Department, Ithaca, NY
Permalink:
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/116993
︎ Download PDF ︎︎︎
Credits
Installation views, I Miss You More Than I Remember You, Tjaden Gallery, Olive Tjaden Hall, Cornell University, 2025.
This exhibition is dedicated to all those lost during the genocide between 1975 and 1979 and those who continue to suffer under ongoing conflict.
Thesis Committee:
Jolene K. Rickard (Chair), Leeza Meksin, Michael Ashkin
Bibliography
Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, 2006.
Ahmed, Sara. 2002. “This Other and Other Others.” Economy and Society 31 (4): 558– 72.
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. NED-New edition, 2. Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
Bennet, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, 2010. Berlant, Lauren. 1998. “Intimacy: A Special Issue.” Critical Inquiry 24 (2): 281–88.
Dalferro, Alexandra Grace. Shimmering Surfaces: An Ethnography of Silk Production in Surin, Thailand. Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University, 2021.
Davis, Erik W. Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual Imagination in Cambodia. Columbia University Press, 2016.
Davis, Erik W. “Weaving Life out of Death: The Craft of the Rag Robe in Cambodian Ritual Technology.” Chapter. In Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China, edited by Paul Williams and Patrice Ladwig, 59–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Davis, Erik W. Treasures of the Buddha: Imagining Death and Life in Contemporary Cambodia. Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Chicago, 2009.
Green, Gillian. Traditional Textiles of Cambodia: Cultural Threads and Material Heritage. Bangkok: River Books, 2003.
Guthrie, Elizabeth. A study of the history and cult of the Buddhist Earth Deity in mainland Southeast Asia. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Canterbury, 1996.
Fuhrmann, Arnika. Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema. Duke University Press, 2016.
Hamilton, Ann. the event of a thread, Commissioned by Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY. Ann Hamilton Studio, 2016.
hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. [Nachdr.], New Press, 1998.
Jack, Margaret Cora. Infrastructural Restitution: Cambodian Postwar Media Reconstruction and the Geopolitics of Technology. Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University, 2020. Jarvis, Helen. Cambodia. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Press, 1997.
Langer, Rita. “Chanting as ‘Bricolage Technique’: A Comparison of South and Southeast Asian Funeral Recitation.” Chapter. In Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China, edited by Paul Williams and Patrice Ladwig, 21–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Lanzillo, Amanda. Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India. 1st ed. Vol. 5. University of California Press, 2023.
Lawther, Cheryl, Rachel Killean, and Lauren Dempster. 2021. “Making (In?)Visible: Selectivity, Visibility and Authenticity in Cambodia’s Sites of Atrocity.” Journal of Genocide Research 24 (1): 45–70.
Lefferts, Leedom. “Monks’ Robes in Rural Northeast Thailand: Relic and Memory.” In The Secrets of South East Asian Textiles: Myth, Status and the Supernatural, edited by Jane Puranananda, 160-170. Bangkok: Riverbook, 2006.
LeVine, Peg. Love and Dread in Cambodia: Weddings, Births, and Ritual Harm under the Khmer Rouge. Singapore: NUS Press, 2010.
Liamdee, Khathaleeya. On the Move Across Phnom Dangrek: Mobilities and Silences in the Thai-Cambodian Borderland. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Washington, 2020.
Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Polmuk, Chairat. Atmospheric Archives: Post-Cold War Affect and the Buddhist Temporal Imagination in Southeast Asian Literature and Visual Culture. Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University, 2018.
Schlund-Vials, Cathy J. War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Sengdala, Brian V. "Cambodian American Listening as Memory Work." American Music 40, no. 3 (2022): 347-362.
Sinnerbrink, Robert. “Memory, Witnessing and Re-Enactment: The Look of Silence, S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Cinematic Ethics.” Chapter. In Contemporary Screen Ethics: Absences, Identities, Belonging, Looking Anew, edited by Lucy Bolton, David Martin-Jones, and Robert Sinnerbrink, 60–80. Edinburgh University Press, 2023.
Smith, Alex G. “Functional Substitutes for Buddhist Funerals.” In Sacred moments: reflections on Buddhist rites and Christian rituals : contributions from 18 global practitioners, edited by Paul H. de Neui, 133-139. New Delhi : Christian World Imprints, 2019.
Stevenson, Lisa. Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.
Tang, Eric. Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the New York City Hyperghetto. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015.
I Miss You More Than I Remember You
នឹកដូចក្តីស្រមៃលើសអ្វីដែលនៅនឹកឃើញ
I Miss You More Than I Remember You is an invocation of memory and longing, unfolding as a sensuous installation that “doubles” as a funerary procession. International remembrance observing fifty years since the Cambodian genocide on April 17, 1975, reignited discourse over narratives of historical trauma, diasporic memory, and U.S. militarism in mainland Southeast Asia.
Reflecting on personal and familial experiences of displacement and resettlement, I reframe the temporal and atmospheric poetics of Theravāda Buddhism to analogize the spatial sociality of Cambodian American refugees as stuck between “insider” and “outsider.” I posit this spatial intervention as counter-memorial, resisting the historicity of archives and gesturing towards the material ephemerality of Theravāda Buddhism, particularly by appropriating Khmer funerary cloth.
The exhibition title – I Miss You More Than I Remember You — is itself a procession of words, sensations, and intimacies, taken from a quote by Vietnamese American writer Ocean Vuong — further articulating the abstraction, dilution, spectrality, and attempt at replicating that which is felt. By de-historicizing mourning and grief through the affective surfaces of Buddhism, this processional installation of objects and media distills postwar intimacies to forestall futurity and renegotiate diasporic belonging.
04.14.2025–04.19.2025
MFA Thesis Exhibition in Tjaden Gallery at Cornell University Art Department, Ithaca, NY
Permalink:
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/116993
︎ Download PDF ︎︎︎
Credits
Installation views, I Miss You More Than I Remember You, Tjaden Gallery, Olive Tjaden Hall, Cornell University, 2025.
This exhibition is dedicated to all those lost during the genocide between 1975 and 1979 and those who continue to suffer under ongoing conflict.
Thesis Committee:
Jolene K. Rickard (Chair), Leeza Meksin, Michael Ashkin
Bibliography
Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, 2006.
Ahmed, Sara. 2002. “This Other and Other Others.” Economy and Society 31 (4): 558– 72.
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. NED-New edition, 2. Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
Bennet, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, 2010. Berlant, Lauren. 1998. “Intimacy: A Special Issue.” Critical Inquiry 24 (2): 281–88.
Dalferro, Alexandra Grace. Shimmering Surfaces: An Ethnography of Silk Production in Surin, Thailand. Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University, 2021.
Davis, Erik W. Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual Imagination in Cambodia. Columbia University Press, 2016.
Davis, Erik W. “Weaving Life out of Death: The Craft of the Rag Robe in Cambodian Ritual Technology.” Chapter. In Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China, edited by Paul Williams and Patrice Ladwig, 59–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Davis, Erik W. Treasures of the Buddha: Imagining Death and Life in Contemporary Cambodia. Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Chicago, 2009.
Green, Gillian. Traditional Textiles of Cambodia: Cultural Threads and Material Heritage. Bangkok: River Books, 2003.
Guthrie, Elizabeth. A study of the history and cult of the Buddhist Earth Deity in mainland Southeast Asia. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Canterbury, 1996.
Fuhrmann, Arnika. Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema. Duke University Press, 2016.
Hamilton, Ann. the event of a thread, Commissioned by Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY. Ann Hamilton Studio, 2016.
hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. [Nachdr.], New Press, 1998.
Jack, Margaret Cora. Infrastructural Restitution: Cambodian Postwar Media Reconstruction and the Geopolitics of Technology. Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University, 2020. Jarvis, Helen. Cambodia. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Press, 1997.
Langer, Rita. “Chanting as ‘Bricolage Technique’: A Comparison of South and Southeast Asian Funeral Recitation.” Chapter. In Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China, edited by Paul Williams and Patrice Ladwig, 21–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Lanzillo, Amanda. Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India. 1st ed. Vol. 5. University of California Press, 2023.
Lawther, Cheryl, Rachel Killean, and Lauren Dempster. 2021. “Making (In?)Visible: Selectivity, Visibility and Authenticity in Cambodia’s Sites of Atrocity.” Journal of Genocide Research 24 (1): 45–70.
Lefferts, Leedom. “Monks’ Robes in Rural Northeast Thailand: Relic and Memory.” In The Secrets of South East Asian Textiles: Myth, Status and the Supernatural, edited by Jane Puranananda, 160-170. Bangkok: Riverbook, 2006.
LeVine, Peg. Love and Dread in Cambodia: Weddings, Births, and Ritual Harm under the Khmer Rouge. Singapore: NUS Press, 2010.
Liamdee, Khathaleeya. On the Move Across Phnom Dangrek: Mobilities and Silences in the Thai-Cambodian Borderland. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Washington, 2020.
Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Polmuk, Chairat. Atmospheric Archives: Post-Cold War Affect and the Buddhist Temporal Imagination in Southeast Asian Literature and Visual Culture. Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University, 2018.
Schlund-Vials, Cathy J. War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Sengdala, Brian V. "Cambodian American Listening as Memory Work." American Music 40, no. 3 (2022): 347-362.
Sinnerbrink, Robert. “Memory, Witnessing and Re-Enactment: The Look of Silence, S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Cinematic Ethics.” Chapter. In Contemporary Screen Ethics: Absences, Identities, Belonging, Looking Anew, edited by Lucy Bolton, David Martin-Jones, and Robert Sinnerbrink, 60–80. Edinburgh University Press, 2023.
Smith, Alex G. “Functional Substitutes for Buddhist Funerals.” In Sacred moments: reflections on Buddhist rites and Christian rituals : contributions from 18 global practitioners, edited by Paul H. de Neui, 133-139. New Delhi : Christian World Imprints, 2019.
Stevenson, Lisa. Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.
Tang, Eric. Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the New York City Hyperghetto. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015.
